Form 8938 and the FBAR are two separate filings, and completing one never satisfies the other. Most people with foreign accounts learn about one of them first, file it, and assume they are done. Then a preparer or an IRS notice tells them there was a second form the whole time, covering the same money under a different rule. We have a Form 8938 guide and an FBAR guide if you need one form in full. Below I compare them.
What Is the Core Difference Between Form 8938 and the FBAR?
The core difference is the agency and the trigger. The FBAR goes to FinCEN once your foreign accounts top $10,000 in aggregate, and Form 8938 goes to the IRS with your Form 1040 once your specified foreign assets top a threshold that starts at $50,000. Filing one buys you nothing on the other.
The FBAR is FinCEN Form 114, filed through the BSA E-Filing System under 31 U.S.C. 5314 and 31 CFR Chapter X. The form is not part of your Form 1040 and it is not filed with the IRS. FinCEN has nonetheless delegated FBAR examination and penalty authority to the IRS under 31 CFR 1010.810(g), so an IRS examiner is who audits the FBAR and who assesses any penalty. Form 8938 is the Statement of Specified Foreign Financial Assets, filed with the IRS as an attachment to that same return under IRC 6038D, a provision Congress added through FATCA.
Who Actually Has to File the FBAR?
You file the FBAR if the aggregate value of all your foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 at any point during the calendar year, even for one day. The threshold ignores filing status, residency, and income, and it applies to the combined total of every account together, so five accounts holding $2,100 apiece already clear it.
Our FBAR filing guide covers the account types, the aggregation math, and the e-filing mechanics in full.
Who Actually Has to File Form 8938?
You file Form 8938 if your specified foreign financial assets exceed $50,000 on the last day of the year or $75,000 at any point during it, when you are unmarried and living in the United States. The threshold rises to $100,000 and $150,000 on a joint return. The much higher figures, $200,000 and $300,000 unmarried or $400,000 and $600,000 on a joint return, are not for everyone overseas. Treas. Reg. 1.6038D-2(a)(3) and (a)(4) give them only to a qualified individual under IRC 911(d)(1), which means a tax home in a foreign country plus either bona fide residence for a full taxable year or 330 full days abroad in a 12-month period.
One threshold sits ahead of all four. If you are not required to file a US income tax return for the year at all, you owe no Form 8938 no matter how large the accounts are, under Regulations section 1.6038D-2(a)(7)(i). The FBAR has no such carve-out, so a low-income year abroad can produce an FBAR obligation with no Form 8938 obligation behind it.
These Form 8938 thresholds are set by Treas. Reg. 1.6038D-2(a) and are not indexed for inflation, so they are the same for tax year 2026 as they were when FATCA reporting began.
Form 8938 is not only an individual filing. IRC 6038D(f) and Regulations section 1.6038D-6 extend it to specified domestic entities at the same $50,000 last-day threshold, so a closely held corporation, partnership or trust formed or used to hold foreign assets can owe the form in its own name.
The year you move catches people out. A couple who relocate in August and file jointly are not qualified individuals under IRC 911(d)(1) for that year, so their thresholds are still $100,000 and $150,000, and $350,000 in foreign accounts puts Form 8938 on the return. The same couple two years later, settled and resident abroad for a full taxable year, files nothing at $350,000. The full mechanics, including how married filing separately splits these numbers, live in our Form 8938 filing guide.
When Do You Actually File Both?
You file both whenever you independently cross both thresholds, which a single foreign account worth more than $50,000 already does for an unmarried U.S. resident. An unmarried U.S. resident with a single foreign account worth $60,000 clears the FBAR's $10,000 mark and the $50,000 Form 8938 mark in the same year, and reports it twice to two different agencies.
The FBAR asks for the account's maximum value during the year. Form 8938 asks for that same maximum value, plus identifying information about the asset and the institution holding it, and it applies the last-day value and the any-time-during-the-year value as two alternative threshold tests.
The two deadlines look identical & they aren't. The FBAR is due April 15 and carries an automatic extension to October 15 that you never have to request. Form 8938 is filed with your income tax return, so it only reaches October 15 when you actually filed a Form 4868. Skip the 4868 and your Form 8938 is late in April while your FBAR still isn't. If your tax home is abroad, an automatic two-month extension to June 15 applies without any form, and Form 4868 takes it from there to October 15.
What Counts as Reportable on Each Form, and Where Do They Diverge?
Form 8938 reaches specified foreign financial assets, which includes foreign stock, securities and entity interests held outside any account. The FBAR reaches only financial accounts, but it picks up accounts you have nothing more than signature authority over. Signature-only accounts sit outside Form 8938.
The FATCA category extends past accounts into foreign stock or securities certificates held directly, without a custodian, plus interests in foreign entities such as a foreign partnership or foreign-issued life insurance with cash value.
A Case Where the Forms Point Opposite Directions
ExampleA controller who can sign checks on her employer's foreign bank account, with no ownership interest in the funds, has an FBAR obligation on that account and no Form 8938 obligation. An investor who holds foreign stock certificates directly in his own name, outside any brokerage account, has a Form 8938 obligation on those shares and no FBAR obligation, since there is no account to report.
What Happens If You Get One of These Wrong?
The two penalty regimes run independently and can both apply to the same account. A non-willful FBAR violation currently carries a maximum penalty of $16,536 per report, because the $10,000 in 31 U.S.C. 5321(a)(5)(B)(i) is adjusted annually for inflation under 31 CFR 1010.821, and a willful violation carries the greater of $165,353 or 50% of the account balance.
The Supreme Court's 2023 decision in Bittner v. United States, 598 U.S. 85 (2023) limited that non-willful penalty to one violation per report filed each year, however many accounts the report covers. That caps a lot of small-account cases. A statutory reasonable cause exception also sits in 31 U.S.C. 5321(a)(5)(B)(ii), which bars the non-willful penalty where the violation was due to reasonable cause and the account balance was properly reported.
Form 8938 penalties run separately. Failing to file costs $10,000, plus up to $50,000 more once the IRS sends a notice and 90 days pass without a corrected filing, plus a 40% accuracy-related penalty under IRC 6662(j) on any understatement of tax attributable to an undisclosed foreign financial asset. A missed Form 8938 also carries its own consequence under IRC 6501(c)(8). The assessment period on the return stays open until three years after the information is furnished to the IRS, and where the failure was due to reasonable cause and not willful neglect, IRC 6501(c)(8)(B) narrows that extension to the items related to the failure.
What If You Never Filed Either Form?
If the income behind the accounts was reported correctly and only the forms were missed, the delinquent submission procedures are the path. If income went unreported and the failure was non-willful, the streamlined procedures are the correct track instead. The two paths are not interchangeable.
Our guide to what to do if you never filed an FBAR walks through the options, and the delinquent international information return procedures cover the forms-only case. On the streamlined side, the Streamlined Domestic Offshore Procedures carry a 5% offshore penalty, while the Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures carry no penalty at all for filers who meet the non-residency test. Picking the wrong track is expensive.
Which One Applies to You?
Start with the FBAR, because its $10,000 threshold catches almost everyone with a foreign account worth mentioning. Then check Form 8938 against your filing status and your status under IRC 911(d)(1), remembering that it reaches assets beyond accounts. If you clear both thresholds, both filings are due, on their own schedules, to their own agencies, describing the same money in two different ways.
Send our international tax team the account list and we will tell you what is owed for each year. Contact TS CPA for a free consultation. We respond within the same day.